


Kissing is a Comfort

by AngeNoir



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grief, Incest, Mourning, New York, Pre-Season 1 fic, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 18:57:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura Hale is 18 and is now in charge of her 15-turning-16 year old brother Derek Hale. Uncle Peter is... gone. Her family is just... gone. She's trying, and maybe it's not perfect, but it works for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kissing is a Comfort

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anaraine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anaraine/gifts).



> I really hope this matches what you were looking for, at least a little bit.

What no one ever told Laura – and they’d told her a lot, really, considering she was most definitely going to be the first pick for the alpha – was that, as an alpha, you had a low-level emotional connection to the rest of the pack. You could pick up when they were worried, or angry, or frightened. Not all the time, and not with all the pack members, because some were very good at locking their emotions away, but it was possible.

Laura found this out the night her mother burnt alive – the night her mother died before her two cousins and aunt, and the night that Laura felt their terror and fear and pain like a knife cutting through her brain.

Later, she’d use that to excuse her failure to notice the person still alive, the person who was still with her, but she knew deep in her heart that there was no real excuse for her neglect.

As it was, she was newly-eighteen, less than a semester away from graduating, and her brother was fifteen-turning-sixteen, and he was a bit less than years from graduating, and her uncle was thirty-two and not healing. Sometimes, if a wolf was hurt badly enough, the wolf retreated and all that was left was the human side. It did something to the mind, to be torn into two like that, and Laura tried her hardest to use her new alpha powers to bring Uncle Peter back. She did, she sat at his side while Derek slept in the waiting room of the hospital, and she concentrated her hardest. If she had felt Aunt Lacy and Jamie and Heather burning alive, surely she could find Uncle Peter’s wolf, and bring that wolf back to his heart and his mind so that he could heal.

But she didn’t. And the Sheriff came to her and asked her what she planned to do – the fire had been ruled arson, but there were no suspects as of yet, and Derek was looking really hollow-eyed, maybe she should look up family somewhere else? Get a hotel room, at least – if she wanted to stay with the Sheriff, she could, for a little while at least. The Sheriff’s kid, nine years old with big eyes and so solemn, so quiet, sat in the waiting room often enough that his scent was ingrained in the walls. Sickness clung to him, as did the scent of death.

Laura turned down the Sheriff’s offer, collected Derek, and holed up in a hotel room.

That would have been the perfect moment, to notice Derek’s withdrawal, the pain in his eyes. But she didn’t, wrapped up in her memories of her family’s deaths, wrapped up in insurance claims and police reports, wrapped up in fear for herself, her uncle, her brother.

Arson, the Sheriff had said, and there had been trouble, nonstop trouble, from the Argents for the past year. Packs had come, seeking her mother’s aid, her father’s strategy, her uncle’s skills. Someone had managed to wipe out all of her family – her older brother, her younger sister, her mother, her father, her two aunts, her grandfather, her four cousins, they were all _gone_ —

Laura ended up calling long-distance to New York. There was a wild pack in the Catskill Mountains, one that hunters knew not to mess with. She and her brother could hole up there while she tried to put her life back together.

Derek didn’t argue, simply followed her silently into the plane and across the country. The alpha of that pack didn’t like a wolf moving in with alpha powers – two alphas naturally fought, over and over, until one established their dominance over the other – and Laura had to dance pretty around barbs and insults to keep from being dragged into an alpha fight. Alpha fights ended up with someone dead; while she was hurting enough to want the outlet, to want to rip and tear and rend, she couldn’t risk Derek’s future like that, not with his blue eyes. Blue eyes were a rarity, and many wolves were superstitious of them. They said that blue eyes reflected a dark soul, a ruthless wolf.

They’d kill Derek, given the chance.

As it was, as a group, the pack shunned Derek. They accepted her readily enough, but the pack youths picked on Derek and her normally brash and over-confident younger brother remained silent and stoic before all of them. She didn’t know how to fix him, how to fix herself, and she scrambled to try and get her GED even as she forced Derek to go back to school. She fought of Fenrir’s attempts to simultaneously woo and defeat her, and she was just stretched so _thin_.

She didn’t cry often. Or, at least, not as often as she could have, or wanted to. Still, when she did, Derek would always slip into bed with her and cuddle close. She would curl into him and just hold tight, breathing in his scent and trying to put everything out of her mind. It was impossible to do so – she still had so much to handle, and she couldn’t stop her brain from racing.

One night, just a few months after they had settled in New York, and five or six months after Laura had gained the alpha powers, she was shaking in Derek’s arms again, the black of the room enveloping, smothering, when he tilted his head down and kissed her.

On the lips.

It was a shock – she had no idea where it came from, what could have prompted him to – to do something like that – and then he did it again, shifting against her and running one of his large hands over her shoulders.

Well, her brain wasn’t racing anymore, she thought faintly.

“Derek, what – what are you doing?” she whispered.

He froze, and even thought it was dark she knew his face would have that curiously blank mask he had on all the time now. He smiled so rarely, she thought mournfully, distracted momentarily from his actions – and then he was up and out of the bed, mumbling apologies, and it was wrong, she knew it, but maybe it was just a comfort thing because he had no one else and frankly it had soothed her, and so she reached out and grabbed his wrist before he could leave.

“Stay,” she half-asked, half-commanded.

And Derek stayed.

+++

Things… changed, for lack of a better term. Laura leaned on Derek a bit more, and Derek withdrew from the rest of the pack. His grades, which had never been outstanding before, suddenly rocketed as he had nothing to do but focus on his studies. He came home and helped her balance their budget, place money in savings and stocks, argue with the insurance company about the money. And as months passed, and Derek would hold her in bed and they would share lazy kisses in the dark, Laura slowly got a better grip on the situation, on her position as alpha, and on her life as a whole.

Derek, meanwhile, did not improve in the least.

For one thing, he always seemed a tad desperate nowadays, clinging to her instead of just holding, never letting her out of his sight. He refused to even try to interact with the pack that was giving them shelter, and while his grades were excellent, Laura was receiving worrying messages from the school counselor, who thought Derek might be suffering depression.

She could feel, vaguely, an echo of his emotions if she really concentrated, but he was pretty good at keeping his feelings from bleeding over the alpha link.

“It’s like – something’s eating away at him,” Laura sighed. She had taken a small job at the local grocery store, which had actually been horrible when they’d first moved here since, as an alpha, her senses had become ten times more sensitive, and the bright lights and multiple scents had exacerbated her situation. Now, though, it was manageable, and she had become tentative friends with one of the other cashiers. Not close friends – she didn’t know the local hunters here, and Catskill was one of the thoroughfares for hunters, in that they would travel through the city regularly on their way south. She never knew which human could be a hunter, and if there was one thing she had drummed into herself and Derek these past eleven months, it was that humans were weak, humans couldn’t be trusted, any human had the power to kill a werewolf if the werewolf was caught unaware.

“Maybe he just needs a change of pace,” Theresa said, lifting one shoulder. “Needs something to snap him out of it. You try talking to him?”

“He’s sixteen years old – he’s got sulking down to an art form,” Laura sighed, turning back to her register as someone dropped considerably more than the fifteen-item limit onto her belt. As she checked out this next wave of customers, bagging because the manager didn’t think the middle of the day was a busy enough time to have more than two lanes open and a few stockers running round in the back, she considered Theresa’s words.

It wasn’t as if she _had_ tried talking, though. And with the anniversary of their family’s death creeping up on them, Derek wound so tight, and Fenrir, the local alpha who was easily her father’s age, aggressively courting her in his homicidal way, something had to break soon. She’d rather it _not_ be her little brother.

+++

It turned out that she was the first to break.

Here, she thought she legitimately had an excuse – which she didn’t have for ignoring Derek’s silence until too late, until it was ingrained in his psyche and locked his words and his communication up – since she wouldn’t have flipped out if it hadn’t been for stupid fucking Fenrir. Their family had moved to California specifically to get away from their wilder, more bestial kin that lived in the north and in the northeast, and Fenrir was everything Laura hated. Oozing supremacy and certain that no _female_ could be a true alpha except to a tainted soul like her brother, Fenrir alternately tried to hand her gifts and tried to goad her into a confrontation.

She’d moved them here, she thought desperately, trying to keep her temper as Fenrir crowded her against the wall in their small cabin on pack lands – he’d walked right in without an invitation, and Derek was still at school, and it was Laura’s day off and she had just been lounging in a nightgown and panties, getting herself a cup of cocoa even if it wasn’t very adult to drink something that had twenty mini-marshmallows in it. She’d moved them here because no one fucked with Fenrir’s pack, because Fenrir was a demanding and ruthless alpha that killed wolves who disobeyed him, who didn’t believe in punishment, who had managed to cow the local hunter population into leaving them alone so long as the human disappearances didn’t top twenty-five in a single year. She’d come here for _safety_ and found nothing but harassment.

Fenrir smiled lazily, dark eyes almost black  as he loomed over her, wearing nothing but goddamn sweatpants and that smarmy smile. “See, Laura, I think it’d just be a hell of a lot easier to integrate with the pack. Fuck, you could be my bitch and solve everything right off the bat. Wolves aren’t made to run alone, werewolves even less so. You’re not exactly trained, and I think I’ve been extremely lenient, letting you get away with defying me for a full year. Out of respect for your loss, of course, but that can only go so far, after all.”

Laura knew her eyes were red, knew she was treading the thin line of anger, that if she exploded Fenrir held all the cards right now. The cabin was on his land; he was in the right to walk in. She had approached him to become a part of his pack, and then refused to submit to his orders (though fuck she’d never kick her brother out or roll over for this asshole, but she knew it was the principle of obedience the pack would see, not the unreasonable demands). She had supplied money to the pack – all pack members had to, of course – but she hadn’t actually interacted with them beyond that. She knew a few of them by name but most of them shunned her, and she shunned them in turn. If it came down to it, no matter what happened here in this kitchen, the pack would back up Fenrir and turn her out into the cold.

Which, honestly, made the decision to go for Fenrir’s jugular that much easier.

With a snarl, the transformation fast and smooth, she launched herself forward, one clawed hand going for Fenrir’s throat and the other going for his balls. He wasn’t expecting it, or he really was that smugly certain of his abilities that he thought he could take her, and she ended up twisting their positions, slamming Fenrir against the chin-up bar her brother had installed in the doorway (Derek would exercise as she cooked dinner, silent, knowing his presence was more of a soother than any words he could say, and she was pretty certain he took comfort in her presence as well).

“Listen to me, you piece of filth,” she growled, voice wolf-rough and vibrating with the force of her snarl, “You may be the alpha here, and I thought you could protect us, but now I see you’re just a jumped up bully who thinks everyone ought to bare their neck to you. You do _nothing_ to make your pack stronger except cull those you think are ‘weak.’ I’m ashamed that I ever thought your pack was worth seeking sanctuary from. Derek and I are leaving. We will walk out of your lands unmolested and you’ll never have to hear from us again.”

“You _bitch_!” Fenrir snarled, jerking against her hold until she dug her claws into his dick and he froze, panting hard.

Laura smiled, and it wasn’t a nice smile. “I may be a bitch, Fenrir, but I’m the bitch who you can’t cow into lifting her tail for you. Unlike you, I don’t need to terrify people into my sheets, and I’d sleep with a _Chihuahua_ before I’d sleep with you. It’d be more satisfying, after all.”

With that, she flung him through the doorway and into the living room. It probably wasn’t a smart idea – she realized that seconds after throwing him – but she stood in the doorway, hair wild around her head and coating her elbows down to her viciously sharp claws. “I formally revoke my status as pack member, Fenrir. I’m leaving, and my brother’s leaving with me, and you have no say over us anymore.”

“You’ll fucking regret this, you—”

Laura had no idea what he was going to say, but he was up off the floor and launching at her so fast – too fast – and even as she tried to respond she knew, she _knew_ , she wasn’t going to be able to get the drop on him again, she was going to die – _or worse_ —

There was a deep roar from the front door, and then Fenrir was slammed to the side, Derek crushing him into the wall. His bright blue eyes shone like lamps, teeth elongated, fur curling down his jaw. His backpack was dropped, discarded, on the doorstep, and Laura realized with a shock that her gawky, gangly little brother was a lot more muscular than she remembered, coltish limbs more defined. Not enough to stop Fenrir – Fenrir backhanded Derek across the room and Derek slammed into the heavy front door with a whimper – but it gave her the chance to dart forward. She wasn’t fast, she wasn’t skilled with her alpha powers, even though she had been taught theoretically what was possible she still hadn’t put the theories into practice – but she could and she did sink her claws into Fenrir’s chest, curling them around his heart, and _held_.

“Bad move, Fenrir,” she whispered. “Do you know how long it will take for these wounds to heal? I know it will be longer than you can afford. How ever _will_ you keep your pack in line when you’re bleeding from your chest for the next week? Can’t slink into the forest and heal, not with your pack in the state that it’s in. I might not know much, but I know what packs like yours operate like. Fear only breeds hate, and ruling your wolves with fear means they’ll jump on the chance to knock you down a few pegs. All because you were laid low by a _female_ alpha and her little brother. They’ll smell the blood like sharks, and you know it.”

Fenrir stared at her hatefully, but he didn’t really have a choice except to lie there and listen, with her fingers deep in his flesh. Then again, she was nineteen, she didn’t know what to do. They needed to leave the cabin, needed to get moving, but if she let go of Fenrir to check on her brother… well, Fenrir might have trouble with his pack, but that would be in the future. In there here and now, it was just her and him.

Behind her, Derek groaned, a sharp whine cut off and harsh panting breaking the stalemate. “Derek,” she growled.

There wasn’t a reply.

“ _Derek_.”

There was a long pause, and then Derek’s voice came, weak, but came. “L-Laura?”

“Go pack our bags. Five minutes.”

“Laura?”

Concussion, probably – Laura could remember back when Derek was ten, and Jack convinced Derek he could make it from the roof to the oak tree in the back of the house – and she made her voice strident, trying to mimic their mother’s no-nonsense voice. “Derek!”

“Ye-yeah?”

Movement behind her, slow, but present – good, that was good, and she lifted her upper lip in a snarl, fingers flexing in Fenrir’s chest. His breath left him in a punch, skin paling dramatically. “Go pack our bags, Derek,” she said, trying to keep her voice level even as her free hand dug into Fenrir’s abdomen and tore. He let out a pained gasp, and some of the hatred faded from his eyes as his body worked to keep alive.

There were slow, stumbling steps behind her, Derek’s gait awkward, shuffling, as he moved into the back room. It wasn’t as if they had a lot – even with living here about a year, they still had just a few changes of clothes, she had a few paperback books, and Derek had his textbooks. They had used to have a lot of stuff – Laura had loved china tea sets, miniature and full-size, and Derek had had his sports equipment and his model cars – but the fire had taught them the importance of material things (namely, that with their family dead and gone, none of that mattered).

“This is what we’re going to do,” she snarled when she could hear Derek staggering about in the back room, the bedroom. “Listen to me. We are leaving. We’re going to leave this cabin and we’re going to walk to the bus stop. We will get on it and leave, and you’ll never hear from us again. I expect to never hear from _you_ again. You got that?”

Bravado, sheer bravado, but Fenrir was in enough pain to nod. He was too much an arrogant asshole to submit, but she didn’t need him to submit, didn’t want him to submit – she just wanted to _leave_.

“’M ready, Laura,” Derek whispered from the doorway.

She was worried though. If she let go of Fenrir, if she moved away, would he still try for her? Her brother?

She didn’t want to kill. There was enough death surrounding her.

With a sharp motion, she dragged the claws in Fenrir’s abdomen to the side, slicing him open, before releasing him and stepping back. Let him stay down. Please let him stay down.

Fenrir stayed down, panting and whining.

“Let’s go, Derek,” she said, backing away. He had his backpack, her duffle bag, and they were almost out the door when Fenrir snarled at them.

“Go on, you bitch! You and your fucked up brother! Not a pack will take you in once I’m through with you!”

“We don’t need _a_ pack, you whining bag of pus,” she snarled back. “We _are_ a pack.”

That bravado lasted her until she and Derek walked into Hudson and boarded the next train heading for New York City. Derek was dazed and extremely docile the entire trip, and Laura had to fight off panic attacks and terror. She had some money in savings, the insurance money would be coming through in about a week or two, but Derek was still in school, still needed to graduate from, fuck, from tenth grade. She needed a job. Yeah, she could live off the insurance money, now that they were actually honoring the contract and paying it out, but she didn’t want to. Besides that, she needed a place for them to stay that wasn’t a ratty hotel room, and they’d need a place to run. They’d need to steer clear of hunters – harder to do, in a bigger populated area.

But New York City had been a dream of hers, one that Derek hadn’t seemed averse to when he was younger. New York City was too populated to have an established pack, so they wouldn’t have to worry about Fenrir passing along orders to wolves to have them harassed (killed).

When the train let them out at Penn Station, Laura was more composed – and Derek was healing, and less dazed. He was still jumpy, though, twitchy, and it was beginning to worry Laura that something had happened, that there was something wrong she wasn’t seeing. Laura found a hotel and splurged for the week, using up the little she had left in savings, even though it meant one bed.

(To be honest, she didn’t look hard for a double.)

But in a week the insurance money would come in, and hopefully she’d find an apartment by then, and really right now she just wanted some place safe and comforting and wanted to check over Derek because something was wrong with her little brother and she couldn’t lose him, she _couldn’t_.

Up in the room – which she’d made sure had a full kitchen, a full bath, and a nice living room area – she dumped her duffle on the couch and turned to Derek. “Derek—” she began.

“How long has that been happening?” Derek demanded, throwing his backpack on the floor and stalking towards her – and then abruptly changing his course to pace towards the terrace and close the curtains.

His anger was highly uncharacteristic, and it startled her into saying, “Derek, it was never that bad—”

“So it’s been happening _the whole time_?!” he snarled, but there was – there was despair, and agony, there. Hurt, deep and buried, and she didn’t understand it.

“Derek, sweetie, he never – it was never like _that_. You knew he wanted to fuck or fight me from the beginning.” She stepped forward, putting a gentle hand on Derek’s arm, realizing that she no longer towered over him; they were the same height, and he was a bit broader in chest than she remembered him being.

Derek whirled on her, hands coming up to grab her upper arms. For a minute, she was terrified, flinching from him—

His face crumpled, and he slumped against her, his forehead resting on her shoulder. She realized, in shock, that he was crying. That he was – he hadn’t cried, not at the funeral, not when she’d left Uncle Peter in Beacon Hills, not when she told him he’d have to leave all his friends, not when the kids of Fenrir’s pack had shunned him and fought with him, not when the school had treated him like an idiot because he wasn’t in all the advanced classes they’d offered (though he’d worked hard and gotten into them, so a big fuck you to the school that thought coming in late in the year meant her brother was a moron).

He was crying now.

“You shouldn’t – he shouldn’t have done that. He can’t force you. _He can’t force you_ ,” Derek whispered, over and over again, clutching her tight.

She found her voice as her hands came up to caress his back – nails still encrusted with Fenrir’s blood, and abruptly and suddenly she wanted a shower – trying to soothe Derek’s almost-silent sobs. “He didn’t. He didn’t, Derek, he didn’t, I’m fine. I can handle myself. We’re fine. We’re free of him.”

He turned his head, burrowing into the crook of her neck and shoulder, and she could feel the wetness of his tears, the hot press of his mouth. “Mine?” he asked, and it was a little kid’s voice, an ask for surety, a begging for reassurance.

“Yours,” she murmured, stroking his hair.

+++

It was later that night, as she stepped out of the tub wrapped in one of the ridiculously soft and fluffy towels that came from staying at a fairly upscale hotel, that Derek seemed to catch on to the fact that there was only one bed. He was sitting on it in nothing but a pair of boxers, fingers twisting nervously in his lap. The room was dark, the only light coming from the bathroom behind her, but she could still see him there, anxious and desperate.

She supposed she ought to go to hell for this, for corrupting her brother in this way, for twisting his need into this.

Then again, as he looked up and his eyes weren’t innocent or startled at all, but dark with knowledge and with lust and with honest awe that she was allowing this, perhaps they were corrupting each other.

“Laura,” he whispered, a prayer, a benediction, a surprise, a reverent whisper, as she let the towel fall onto the chair by the bed and gently straddled his hips, slowly pushing him back onto the bed and leaning over him, her wet hair leaving dark dots on the white, white sheets. Derek was dark against them – dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes that reflected blue and then went dark again.

“Yours, little brother,” she murmured, stroking his cheek, his chin. “If you don’t want this – if you say no – we’ll stop. You’re still my brother. That won’t ever change, no matter what happens here.”

Derek swallowed, and she could see the baser desires fighting with the idea that this was his older sister, the girl who’d teased him when he thought he had a crush on the girl who sat in front of him in sixth grade, the girl who’d dumped cold water over his head in retaliation for a prank he’d pulled on her, the girl who was doing her best to be his alpha.

“I – I want this,” he whispered, so softly, and his hands tentatively came up to cup her ribs – so gentle, so careful, as if he was holding something precious in his hands and he couldn’t understand why it was his, why it was _here_.

She leaned down – he squirmed under the cold drops of water, until her lips pressed against his – and this part was familiar, they had shared this often enough, holding each other through the past months, taking physical comfort in the other’s nearness. It was hot and wet, Derek more eager now, less chaste, and she took her time, mapped out his lips and gums with her tongue.

Derek groaned under her, hips bucking up, and she let out a soft chuckle as she felt his dick press against her cunt. “Unless you have a condom, Der-bear, we aren’t moving to that part of the event right this evening,” she murmured.

He flushed red – she loved that she could still embarrass him, when no one else could – and looked aside. But she was having none of that; there were other things they could do tonight, and she wanted to do them all with him if she could. So she pushed off of him and gestured for him to lie properly on the bed, pulling down the covers and making sure the towel was still in easy reach. Derek was eager, but also nervous, and she could understand why. This was – new, and different, and she really didn’t want this to happen unless Derek was completely fine with it, was ready.

“Now then,” she murmured as she got back on top of him (boxers gone, and damn, her little brother wasn’t that bad in the dick department) and pulled the covers around them a bit. “I’m going to stop it right here, Derek, if you are doing this because you think _I_ want this. If you don’t want this—”

“I already said I did, Laur – god—” Derek groaned, which, okay, her pussy was right up against his dick, and he was a teenaged boy, this was probably more than a bit unfair to him.

She’d have to watch that carefully, though. She _did not_ want to force him into this, didn’t want him sticking to this out of guilt or because he thought she needed it or because of some other stupid reason he could come up with (and she’d lived with him for nineteen years – she knew what kinds of stupid reasons he could come up with).

For right now, though, she took his hands – clenched in the sheets at his sides – and placed them on her skin, cupping her breasts. “You can touch, you know,” she said, a bit breathless as she rocked against him, letting his dick slide between the lips of her cunt, ride against her clit.

He let out a shocked gasp, eyes wide, and they were lightening, blue reflecting at her. Impulsively, she leaned down, kissing the corner of one eye. “They’re beautiful, you know,” she groaned as his fingers found her nipples and tentatively pinched at them. “Your eyes. You are amazing, Der. You’re _mine_.”

He whined, short and sharp, mouth gaping open unattractively, and she wondered what it would be like to have him buried face-first in her pussy, licking her out. The idea of it, the feel of his limbs against hers, the sheer novelty of what they were doing, had her kissing him eagerly, sucking at his tongue, while one of her hands went down to rub at her clit – hitting the head of Derek’s dick at the same time.

Derek let out an embarrassingly high-pitched squeal and came over his abdomen and chest, and her belly.

Teenagers.

He was blushing profusely, the red high in his cheeks and traveling down his throat and into his pecs, but she pinched his nose. “We’ll just have to practice a bit more,” she laughed, teasing, and got off him to lie on her back. “Want to get me off?”

For a moment, he froze, and there was a flash of something buried – something she had suspected, since his reaction to Fenrir’s unwanted advances on her, but she had no proof for and, honestly, no idea how it could have happened to him, how her family had _missed_ something like that – but then he was smiling that big, goofy smile of his, teeth flashing white and dark eyes warm with lust and easy attraction.

Something to think about, later. _Much_ later, because Derek was lying between her legs now, lapping almost delicately at the short hair on the edges of her cunt before making longer, deeper licks in the center. She gasped, one hand going to his hair to stroke his scalp, and he shuddered, arching into her touch.

She’d have to remember that his head was an erogenous zone, for other times.

But he was curling his tongue around her clit, sucking and biting lightly, and he was really skilled at this, since when had he had sex before, she’d have to – oooh – have to ask him about that later—

“Derek!” she gasped, hips bucking against his mouth, and he let her ride it, and she could _feel_ his smug smile, the little bastard, and then she was coming, the stress and adrenaline of the night culminating as her pussy convulsed and contracted, and she was dimly aware that she was gasping like a porn star (ugh, really?), little ‘oh, oh, oh’ noises, her hand fisted in Derek’s hair.

Derek arm-crawled up the bed, pulling the blankets with him, but didn’t curl up around behind her, like he had every other night for the past year, give or take. He instead wrapped around her middle, head resting buried under her arm, one of his big hands curled around her waist, holding her tight. “Mine,” he whispered, breath tickling the top and side of her left breast, and she curled her arm around to stroke his hair.

He was hard again – teenager refractory periods were nonexistent, she knew, but damn, that was, like, barely a minute or two after he had come – but he didn’t try to get off. Hell, he didn’t even hump or twitch or anything. He just held her tight, and she held him.

“You’re going to have to tell me what happened, eventually,” she murmured into the dark.

He tensed against her side, not saying anything, and then said very quietly, “When I’m ready?”

She ruffled his hair, just a little, drowsiness overcoming her. “When you’re ready.”

 +++

(They found an apartment within the week, Laura decided to go to a community college for her Associate Degree while working at a daycare center, and Derek went back to school.)

(Derek graduated with a 3.85 GPA, and they celebrated by going out to a club and dancing as if they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Derek had been pleased for weeks to come.)

(Derek got into New York University, and dreamt of becoming a nurse or a pediatrician.)

(Laura graduated from the community college and bought herself a black Camaro as a treat, which Derek teased her mercilessly about, because who buys a car in New York City, where the hell did she think she was going to park it, the subway system was faster, hell the _taxi_ system was faster – Laura put him in a headlock and kissed his breathless and told him that sometimes girls liked to buy themselves nice things and the appropriate response was to praise the thing and not speak about its impracticality.)

(Derek coveted the Camaro fiercely. She teased him for it but gave him the keys to it on the weekend and they would drive together into New Jersey or Boston or even Vermont once and just get away from the city for a while.)

(He never told her who, but he told her what had happened to him. The anger from hearing his stuttering and his quiet belief that ‘ _I never said no, I just didn’t want to all the time, that’s all, it wasn’t like what… what Fenrir tried_ ’ was what spurred her into learning how to transform into a full wolf.)

(When, about six years after the fire, she could _feel_ another wolf in their pack, and she got a call from the long-term care nurse that Uncle Peter was starting to move and respond to stimuli, she told Derek to finish up his midterms, that she was taking vacation days and flying out to Beacon Hills.)

(Her last, _last_ thought was of Derek, and how Derek would find out about her death by feeling it, all the way across the country, and she mourned fiercely for leaving her brother alone when he was just starting to find his feet and make a new life for himself.)


End file.
